1. I have had the opportunity to be coached by and have my children coached by some super high school and college coaches. I have also seen a couple terrible coaches. There is no need to talk about manhood, in my opinion. Coaching should be positive at all times. (See Tim Whitehead at UMaine or Bill County at LHS)

2. [u]Too many parents try to live vicariously through their kids[/u]. Give it up. You had your chance.

3. My motto to my kids: "If you excel in practice, you'll get the minutes. The coach will play his/her best players."

4. The best coaches find a way to keep all kids involved. Even if they are a permanent fixture at the end of the bench, the good coach will keep them involved in the game in some way. It can be done.

5. If the coaches don't coach, the players won't play. If you see a poor team year after year, there is usually a poor coach involved. A good coach finds talent that others look right past.

6. I can recall the football coach at my high school in the 1960's. He was state champion three years in a row. He had no sensational athletes playing for him. And his offense consisted of about five plays. Dive left, dive right, sweep left, sweep right, pass to tight end across the middle and maybe a counter once in a while. But everyone knew their blocking assignment and made their blocks. The defense knew one of the five plays were coming, but couldn't stop the play. Full house backfield, straight T formation. He was fiery, but it was all about the execution.

During my times coaching, refereeing, parent of player, etc., I have seen coaches who use intimidation as a technique, but have never seen it become an effective tactic. You really can't compare coaching kids with military training. The kids playing sports these days have a lot of options if they lose interest. (AAU, travel teams, local leagues, off season training programs, camps.) When a soldier is in boot camp, he has few options, if any. The training is also of a much more serious nature. Sports are not life or death.

In my experience, the coaches at the high school and the lower levels who use intimidation as motivation will not succeed. In fact, the ones I have seen use these tactics are not at the level of their counterparts and are using profanity and browbeating to make up for their own coaching inadequacies.

Argue away but it is a pointless discussion. The feminist take on this is that such rough upbringing MUST result in men who are "abusive cavemen."

Never mind that they offer not ONE shred of evidence to support that - and that the experience - our experiences, certainly, and the experience of generations of men before us show that the EXACT OPPOSITE is true.

I'm just stating what I see as being effective. If not keeping score was the only way to be effective, I would have to give up on sports altogether, and maybe the human race.

There is a place a little below boot camp level for stern coaching techniques. To use it as do-all for a coaches personal style is ignoring the personalities and personal motivations of the kids themselves. A good coach will adjust his techniques to his players as much as his style of play on the court.

"When a soldier is in boot camp, he has few options, if any. The training is also of a much more serious nature. Sports are not life or death."

No, but they prepare you better for a life or death situation than the average person. Your reactions are better and your ability to make quick decisions is sharper. In my experience the helicopter crewmembers who played sports were better adapted for the task at hand. They could also deal with losses better. Losses do happen in life, both on the field and in combat.

I save quotes. I have a very large list of quotes by people who I respect. These run from the ancient Greeks to our forefathers, Churchill, Kipling and people I know personally. The shortest quote I saved was by one of my door gunners in the Mekong Delta. "War sucks." Then he went back to work. I was thinking of him when I wrote the previous paragraph. Another quote is by a helicopter pilot friend.

From the sounds of the many past players of this coach that responded to the news articles, I would say he is well liked and respected by past players. The whole touching yourself thing sounds kinda gay to me and I do not condone it! :evil: Coaches encouraging and demanding this type of behavior should be fired!

In military flight training a great deal of pressure is applied to the students. If you can't deal with somebody yelling at you, how could you deal with somebody shooting at you? It's a valid question. 65% is not passing. When you are flying off a ship you must make that on board landing every time. That includes at night in the rain. Next to flying in combat it is probably the most intense thing you will ever do.

Some people are just not cut out for it. Better to learn that early on. Go play in the town band. Deliver meals on wheels. Do something for your community. Those are worthy and valuable tasks also. There are many people on an aircraft carrier. It won't work without cooks and mechanics. Too many sheeple today want equal outcomes. Equal outcomes are a disaster for a fighter pilot and for a student who could have excelled in school. Sports provide an arena for competition and excellence along with academics. Sports are the origins of most of our combat pilots. Maybe that's why liberals hate sports.

This is the only reference I find to the one boy:[quote] He then required his players to all stand up and put their hands down their pants and check their manhood. One player did not, and he was singled out."[/quote] It doesn't even say who did the singleing out, but if it was the coach, would that be bullying? Again, I could be missing something.

Quite a thread folks.
IMHO the coach was out of line. I also wonder if the parent who shoved the coach was the parent of the kid that got singled out for not grabbing his willy. Or maybe a father of one of the kid's who did?
I'm not sure how I would react if mine came home and told me what went on. I think I might have done more than shove this idiot.
This coach is a lunatic and should not be allowed to coach at this level.
They made the right move.

I have reread this entire thread and can find only three cited (with links) articles. From those articles we can learn a few things.

The team made the tournament for the first time ever while he was a coach. I do not mean to suggest that the end justify the means, only to point out that the program was more successful.

The firing came one day after a physical confrontation with a parent whose son had been starting and was no longer. This parent, according to one of the articles, had had verbal confrontations with this coach in the past. A parent of one of the current players mentions "vindictive" parents pressing for the coach's firing for "some" time.

The coach is quoted as saying: "Was that tactic appropriate? No. And I'm paying the price for it. I can pay that price because I accept my responsibility, and I'm being accountable."

Another parent of a former player questions the timing of the firing following the physical altercation over a week after the cited incident in the locker room.

The school has suggested that they had met with the coach three times (including the last meeting) while the coach remembers only one other meeting. Given the nature of sports today, two or three incidents in a four year time span (it is implied that the meetings all occurred this year) does not seem to be excessive.

I will state again that I do not agree with what this coach did, but I do not view it as serious enough to fire him with only a few games to go in the season. If there is more that is not reported, I would be open to changing my opinion. I sense that there is a connection between the altercation with the parent and the coach being fired. We will probably never know.

I have observed coaches using differing "techniques" to motivate teams from year to year, sometimes within the same year. Coaches, whether good or bad, always try to find ways to get the most out of their players. Sometimes they do something really stupid, haven't we all?

There certainly seem to be a lot of "judgmental" folks here willing to destroy this man's career [b]without all the facts [/b]being known. I find that apalling.